![]() ![]() ![]() To put it in perspective, a market with six equally sized firms would equate to 1,667 HHI. Decreased concentration thresholds (1,800 HHI) and a 30 percent market share threshold to reach the structural presumption.Presumption of coordinated effects based on high concentration (defined by the lower threshold of 1,800 HHI), while explicitly discrediting rebuttals based on structural conditions that prevent coordination - finding such conditions “exceeding rare in the modern economy.”.Some of the more notable expansions include: Rebuttal evidence is largely discredited – the failing firm defense is very narrow, the Agencies note that entry in most industries takes a significant amount of time and is therefore insufficient, and efficiencies are deemed not cognizable if they will accelerate a trend toward concentration or vertical integration. In parallel, the Agencies set the stage for defining narrower relevant markets (which itself would lead to increased concentration and market shares). Transactions will now be considered presumptively unlawful (also known as the “structural presumption”) if the merged parties have a combined market share of more than 30 percent or concentration measurements exceed 1800 on the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (“HHI”) 1 – a significantly lower threshold than the last merger guidelines (published in 2010). The Agencies’ focus on potential harms exceeds pricing effects to now include impacts on wages and employment terms, diminution of innovative effort, reduction of capacity investments (including lay-offs or hiring freezes), and limitations on product variety or features. The Agencies are paying more attention to serial acquisitions, labor competition, innovation, elimination of potential entrants, coordinated effects, firms with dominant positions, and foreclosure concerns. The 51-page Guidelines detail a wide-range of competitive harms and circumstances that could possibly raise concerns, casting a wide net to capture even those transactions involving partial ownership stakes or no horizontal or vertical overlaps. The Guidelines embrace a return to the precedent of the 1960s, moving away from a focus on the “consumer welfare” standard focused on price effects, and favoring fragmentation over efficiency. The Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) and Department of Justice (“DOJ”) (collectively, the “Agencies”) published their highly anticipated draft Merger Guidelines (“Guidelines”), subject to public comment until September 18. Two years ago, we announced that an antitrust revolution was underway. "I'm the one who's trying to save it.‘Big is Bad’ Embraced and Scope of Scrutinized Transactions Expanded He raised fanciful, fact-free allegations of widespread fraud and "thousands" of dead people having voted for President Biden, called for voting to be limited in nearly all cases to voting in person on Election Day, and dismissed the results of the 2020 election as a product of the "crime of the century.""I'm not the one trying to undermine American democracy," Trump told a cheering crowd after falsely accusing Democrats of stealing the 2020 election, and railing against mail-in and absentee voting. Most of them go days or weeks without interacting with Trump in person.But when he spoke Saturday night to the North Carolina Republican convention, in what was billed as the resumption of his rallies and speeches, Trump was both a diminished figure and an oversized presence in American life, with a remarkable - and many say dangerous - hold on his party.In a 90-minute speech, Trump repeatedly took aim at China for the coronavirus, ran through a litany of conservative culture war issues and ended with an extended frontal attack on voting and American democracy in which he endorsed a long list of Republican voter suppression proposals. Trump works there, mostly alone, with two assistants and a few body men.His political operation has also dwindled to a ragtag team of former advisers who are still on his payroll, reminiscent of the bare-bones cast of characters that helped lift a political neophyte to his unlikely victory in 2016. So are most of the family members who once worked there with him and some of the fixtures of the place, like his former lawyer Michael Cohen, who have since turned on him. ![]() Donald Trump, the former president of the United States, commutes to New York City from his New Jersey golf club to work out of his office in Trump Tower at least once a week, slipping in and out of Manhattan without attracting much attention.The place is not as he left it. ![]()
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